Smartphones can be distracting with their dizzying array of apps and constant stream of notifications. A new application is called Poppy aims to organize the chaos by combining your calendar, email, messages and other sources into a single dashboard.
The idea, according to the company’s website, is that “Poppy pays attention so you don’t have to.”
Users can connect various services to Poppy’s app, including their email, calendar and, at least, their location. Poppy then uses this data along with artificial intelligence to guess what’s important to you right now based on what’s going on in your life. At a high level, this means you can open Poppy’s app or take a look at its widgets to see what meetings or tasks you have on your plate.
But Poppy’s most powerful feature is probably its proactive suggestions.
For example, if Poppy has access to your calendar and sees that you have a 30-minute gap while you’re near a park, she could suggest you take a break and go for a walk before your next appointment. And if you’re planning a brunch with a friend who mentioned their food preferences in previous communication, that information could be taken into account when recommending restaurants.
You can also message Poppy with questions or requests, almost as if you had a personal assistant working for you. Poppy can track your flights and alert you of changes or nudge you when it’s time to take your medication.
Poppy’s maker, Sai Kambapatisays he has always been fascinated by human-computer interaction, having earned his master’s degree in computer science with a specialization in that field. Previously a software engineer at AI hardware startup Humane, Kambampati said he has seen firsthand how people are trying to rethink the way we engage with technology.
“I’ve always been interested in challenging what computers can do, especially the idea of the computing environment and computers that can proactively sense what you need and anticipate your needs,” Kambampati told TechCrunch. “That’s something that I found very, very exciting. And I felt that with all the AI technology that we see around us, it’s never been more possible to start something like this.”
At launch, Poppy works with everyday apps like Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Gmail, Outlook, iCloud Mail, Apple Health, Reminders, Contacts, iMessage, WhatsApp and more. (It uses a Mac app to access iMessage, which could later be a problem since Apple generally doesn’t allow third-party apps to access its messaging service.) It also works with apps like Uber and Instacart, and Kambampati plans to expand support to others over time.
The company says that user data is encrypted when stored in its database and has a zero-retention policy enabled when using cloud-based LLMs for its offerings. In time, however, Kambampati would like to shift to using local AI models on the device as the technology advances.
“Hopefully, my dream is – in two to three years from now, when our devices have much more powerful computers and the models are getting much smaller, cheaper and better quality – finally we can have all this running on our own devices and we won’t even have to hit the servers,” he says.
Poppy’s four-member San Francisco-based team is backed by $1.25 million in pre-seed funding led by Kindred Ventures, with various angels also participating, including DeepMind’s Logan Kilpatrick.
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